The Zeit-Geist eBook

now. I’ll give you the things. There—­there
isn’t enough of the morphia drops to get you
to sleep, only to make you feel easy; and here’s
the strips of blanket I’ve sewed together to
tie yourself on with. It’s nice and soft—­climb
up now and fix yourself. It’s Toyner that
will catch me, and you too, if I don’t get back.
Look at the moon—­near the middle of the
sky.”

She established him upon the branch again with the
comforts that she had promised, and then she gave
him one thing more, of which she had not spoken before.
It was a bag of food that would last, if need be, for
several days.

He took it as evidence that she had lied to him in
her assurance that she could return the next night.
As she moved her boat out of the secret openings among
the dead trees, she heard him whining with fear and
calling a volley of curses after her.

That her father’s words were all profane did
not trouble Ann in the least. It was a meaningless
trick of speech. Markham meant no more at this
time by his most shocking oaths than does any man by
his habitual expletive. Ann knew this perfectly.
God knew it too.

Yet if his profanity was mechanical, the man himself
was without trace of good. There was much reason
that Ann’s heart should be wrung with pity.
It is the divine quality of kinship that it produces
pity even for what is purely evil. Ann rowed
her boat homeward with a hard determination in her
heart to save her father at any cost.

CHAPTER V.

An hour later the small solitary boat crept up the
current of the moonlit river. The weary girl
plied her oars, looking carefully for the nook under
the roots of the old pine whence she had taken the
boat.

She saw the place. She even glanced anxiously
about the ground immediately around it, thinking that
in the glamour of light she could see everything;
and yet in that rapid glance, deluded, no doubt, into
supposing the light greater than it was, she failed
to see a man who was standing ready to help her to
moor the boat.

Bart Toyner watched her with a look of haggard anxiety
as she came nearer.

A uniform is a useful thing. It is almost natural
to an actor to play his part when he has assumed its
dress. A man in any official capacity is often
just an actor, and the best thing that he can do at
times is to act without a thought as to how his inner
self accords with the action, at least till we have
attained to a higher level of civilisation. Toyner
had no uniform, nor had he mastered the philosophy
that underlies this instinct for playing a part; he
had an idea that the whole mind and soul of him should
be in conscientious accord with all that he did.
It was this ideal that made his fall certain.

He had no notion that the girl had not seen him.
Before she got out, when she put her hand to tether
the boat, she felt his hand gently taking the rope
from her and fell back with a cry of fear.